experimental-gameplay-project posts

Games with destroyable landscapes are always a favorite, and MinimaBomber is one of these games. Sharing much in common, both design-wise and visually, with the incredibly hard I Wanna Be The Guy, MinimaBomber takes it one step further and lets you sculpt the landscape through your wonderful explosives. It's a shame that it's so short, because it's absolutely excellent. Then again, it was an entry into the Experimental Gameplay Project bare minimum theme, so one can't expect it to be too long.

MinimaBomber controls like any other platformer. Use A and D to move left and right, and press S to jump. As you progress, you get access to new abilities, such as wall grabbing, airwalking, and double-jumping, which is a nice addition. You also have two kinds of weapons: bombs and rockets. Rockets home in on your mouse cursor, where bombs arc through the air as grenades. There's a little more to it, but why not just paly it yourself?

Haunting, minimalistic games are our specialty, with games like Dyson ranking high on the list of must-have games that are played often. Broken Brothers is yet another addition to this list, thanks to simple graphics, simple gameplay, and creepy music. It's artistic in the way that will send shivers down your spine, and any RTS fan will love the careful dissection of their favorite genre. It's one of the best entries to any Experimental Gameplay Project theme to date.

Broken Brothers is all about fighting insects to get back your lost brothers. To do this, you must gather hope, which translates into units. It's a fairly standard resource gathering to unit production model, but the incredibly basic way in which the game approaches all of this makes it a definite play. The two downsides are the huge, sudden leap in difficulty, and the inability to make more "bases".

Despite bad translations, gamers can still enjoy games that are genuinely fun. Look at the Castlevania games, after all. Bactoriam is one of these games. It has a terrible translation, but the mix of traditional arena shooter gameplay and interesting physics make it a must play. It is, after all, an entry into the Experimental Gameplay Project's monthly theme of bare minimum.

Bactoriam's gameplay feels like a fusion of Osmos and any arena shooter. When you fire or move, you drain yourself of goo' If you run out of goo and take a hit, you die. You also lose goo every time you take a hit. It's a simple system that turned out extremely well, and is a great play for any fan of shmups.

Creating your own objects and customizing are all the rave lately, with games like Crayon Physics Deluxe topping the charts in terms of critical and commercial feedback. PaintShip, an entry into this month's Experimental Gameplay Project theme of bare minimum, is one of these customizable games, and is easily one of the best we have played. Best of all, it's entirely browser-based, which means you can play it anywhere you go!

PaintShip revolves around creating a ship, placing your components, and taking on missions. In practice, this comes out to drawing your ship inside a small frame and then placing the components anywhere in the frame. The components can be different colors as well, which changes the color of the things they do. Gameplay is simple, with your ship darting around to wherever your mouse is and attacking ships that your mouse scrolls over. THere are some minor movement issues, and it would be nice if there was a button to prevent yourself from firing, but all-in-all, it comes out to be a very excellent game.

How is this even a shooter? It's entered into the Experimental Gameplay Project's Unexperimental Shooters theme, but it has absolutely nothing to do with shooters. It doesn't matter however, because even without following the theme, Zombies!!! is a fun browser game that challenges you to recognize the right faces. It's an interesting concept that is made all the better by the fact that it is a beat-'em-up, which is not seen all that often any more.

In Zombies!!!, you must kill as many zombies as possible. Each zombie has a face over their head, which determines what weapons they can be damaged by. The weapons you have selected will only work on the zombie that is the intended target, with the exception of the fists, which work on everyone. If you are curious as to which face your weapon corresponds to, look at the face next to the health bar, as it shows you what faces the weapons can damage.

Socrates was known for his outstanding wit and deep philosophical arguments. His most famous saying is easily "I only know that I know nothing," and the method by which he came across the gem of humility is now known as the socratic method. But what if he didn't die? What if he was actually brought to the future to fight against a zombie army as a cyborg? This is the premise of Socratic Method, a Unity-based shooter made for the Experimental Gameplay Project's Unexperimental Shooters theme.

Socratic Method is easy to learn. You move around and gun down zombies. There's nothing fancy about it, just lots of gore-splattered action. Zombies spawn from portals at intermittent times, and once you have met your quota for zombies killed in the level, a ton of enemy portals open as well as the exit portal. Make it to the exit alive, and you've finished.

Most shmups have you die in only a single hit. However, not many make you invincible, but reset your multiplier whenever you take a hit. This is the concept of Obsessive Nuclear Testing Disorder, an entry into the Experimental Gameplay Project's Unexperimental Shooters theme. It's not the most amazing game ever made, but it's certainly fun and does a good job of making you think about where shmups can go.

Obsessive Nuclear Testing Disorder involves you gunning down ships to build up your multiplier. Every time you reach 7000 points, you get a nuke. You must then use these nukes on waves of enemy ships to get the real, recorded score. It balances reward and risk very well, although once you get so much multiplier, your nukes are self-sustaining.

For those without a Nintendo DS, there is a game called Electroplankton that music fans will no doubt enjoy. In it, you guide various plankton into making noises by bouncing around. BubbleBee, an entry into the Experimental Gameplay Project's Unexperimental Shooters theme, takes inspiration from this game and tosses in a little particle theory to add some interesting twists.

There is no way to win in BubbleBee. Rather, all you do is shoot little colored balls around inside a box. The balls collide with each other, conserving momentum and continuing around their little enclosed space. They can combine, and if they reach critical mass, an orchestral chord plays. It's an interesting distraction for the music-minded person

The most interesting applications, it seems, are the ones that have no real gameplay. This is the case with the Egg Worm Generator, a game that was originally intended to be an entry into the Experimental Gameplay Project's Unexperimental Shooters monthly theme. However, it eventually just turned into a strange little evolution simulation that is interesting to watch. You could even leave it on overnight and see how well your creatures do!

Egg Worm Generator is all about reaching the right side of the arena. The left side kills worms, making their genes lost forever. The next generation is spawned when either four worms reach the right side or sixty seconds pass. Each of these worms pass on their genetics to future worms, making the name of the game speedy movement to the right. You can see the 16 best speeds and worms in the little mini-leaderboard. Overall, a fun distraction or background application.

Most shooters nowadays follow the standard of kill enemies, acquire points, and use power-ups. What would happen, however, if they followed a more... communist style of gameplay? No points, no power-ups, just the eternal struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. That is the concept behind Kosmosis, an entry into the Experimental Gameplay Project's Unexperimental Shooters monthly theme.

In Kosmosis, you control a single proletariat that must go around the playing field, gathering up other people like him to strike out at the enemies of communism. In practice, the game creates a sort of flocking mechanism: you run around and gather people, and as you grow larger, the game begins to take on a life of its own. The end goal of the game is to reach 100% critical mass, which makes you win the game. You can read more about the development, as well as play the game, at the developer's website.